Tag: gas

Mixed Feelings About Drilling for Natural Gas

  • Natural gas drilling rig in Wyoming (Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management).

By now, you may have heard that Northern Michigan is poised for a boom in natural gas production. Developers have paid a record amount of bonuses for drilling rights on state and private land. At first, property owners focused on what is fair payment, but, as Bob Allen reports, they’re now questioning how drilling will affect their land and water.

Transcript

It’s mostly large landowners, especially farmers, who’ve been approached to lease their mineral rights. Ed Krupka grew up on this 80 acre farm in Leelanau County, and he’s weighing the pros and cons of the leasing offers he’s received.

“I have four contracts sitting on my office desk right now. All look very similar.”

If a gas well were to be drilled on his land, he says, it would mean scraping away the topsoil and removing fruit trees from about seven acres, but aside from loss of productive land he’s also worried about his water.

Drillers will use a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to get at natural gas trapped in tight rock formations as much as two miles down.

Fracking pumps millions of gallons of fluid into a well under high pressure to force open the rock and capture more of the gas.

Drillers say they take numerous precautions to protect drinking water, but for the last couple of years, stories have emerged about erupting gas wells, contaminated water and people and animals getting sick.

Ed Krupka says an article in Vanity Fair magazine about a family in Pennsylvania got his attention.

“Their drinking water turned brown. Their daughter started feeling nauseous after showers. And it just makes you wonder, you want some guarantees or you want to know as much information about what they’re going to do on your land as you possibly can.”

People in the oil and gas industry say none of those things are likely to happen in Michigan. Darel Willison is with Superior Well Services in Gaylord. He was in charge of the frack job for the first well in Michigan drilled to what’s called the Collingwood Shale formation, and he told a meeting of landowners these gas wells are so deep that the fracking fluid cannot make its way back up through layers of rock to contaminate drinking water.

“It’s an impossibility people. Too many rocks in there. The frack job down here in the Collingswood will never reach the fresh water zones. Cannot happen.”

That reassures some landowners who prefer to stress the positives of a potential new gas play.

Glen La Cross says it will create more jobs and economic activity at a time when that’s sorely needed. He owns Leelanau Fruit, a company that processes cherries and apples near Suttons Bay.

“I am 100% supportive of it. The hydraulic fracturing I think is being blown up quite a bit. I think that until it’s proven this is doing some damage I think we have to be positive and move forward and explore these resources.”

If this new gas play takes off and pays big, the extra revenue could help some older farmers keep their land instead of selling it off to pay for their retirement.

Ed Krupka likes that possibility, but he still worries about the impacts not just from drilling new wells but from the pipelines and processing plants and waste disposal that also goes with it, and he recognizes that the region’s economy, and not just the farm economy, depends on clean fresh water.

“We live here in the middle of water, and you can’t do too much without affecting the water here.”
Bob Allen, The Environment Report.
Rebecca Williams: By the way, leases for drilling on state land will be going up on the auction block at the end of October. The spring auction brought in a record amount of money.

Spill Dredges Up Great Lakes Drilling Debate

  • The oil spill in the Gulf is stirring up old debates about drilling in the Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)

The Gulf oil spill is churning up an old debate…

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Now that the oil is spreading throughout the Gulf Coast states, some politicians who have called for offshore drilling in the past are being attacked for their stance. Julie Grant reports that one of the Republican candidates for Attorney General in Michigan is being forced to defend a decade-old vote to allow drilling in the Great Lakes.

PAST TER STORIES ON THE GL DRILLING DEBATE

TER story about Mike Rogers’ effort to block a federal ban on drilling in the Great Lakes

Transcript

The Michigan Democratic Party has a new online ad.

(sound of the ad)

It starts with photos of the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. We see fish washed up onshore. And these words appear on screen: “Habitats destroyed, wildlife killed, an economy in ruins.” It continues, “Despite these risks, one man wants to drill for oil in the Great Lakes.”

The ad attacks Bill Schuette, one of the Republicans running for Michigan Attorney General.

“When Mr. Schuette was a state senator here in Michigan, he sponsored and voted for legislation which would have allowed oil drilling in the Great Lakes.”

Mark Brewer is chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.

“We think it’s particularly timely to be reminding the voters of Michigan about this, given the disaster that’s occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Mr. Schuette has responded with an online ad of his own.

(music from Schuette’s ad)

In it, he calls the attempt to connect him with offshore oil drilling in Lake Michigan “pathetic.”

“An attack ad by the Michigan Democratic Party completely distorts my record of safeguarding the Great Lakes. It’s a lie, it’s a complete lie. And they know that it is.”

Well, it’s not a complete lie. According to the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, when Schuette was a state senator in 2001, he sponsored and voted for a bill to allow drilling in Lake Michigan.

Bill Schuette says he never supported drilling in the water, the way BP was doing in the Gulf. In the bill he supported, the oil wells were required to be at least 1,500 feet from the shoreline. This is called directional drilling. The wellheads are actually on land, and the pipelines slant underground, into the rock bed under the water.

“We first made sure we had the strongest, toughest, most stringent regulations that protected the dunes, protected the lake shore, made sure there was no drilling on the lakeshore. Made sure there was no drilling in the lake, itself. And I voted for that bill.”

So, Schuette did vote to allow drilling in Lake Michigan. That was in July, 2001. There was a public outcry when the bill passed. Many people didn’t want drilling in the Lake. In November that same year, the U.S. Congress approved a federal ban on drilling in all of the Great Lakes. Congress wanted better study of the safety concerns. Then, just a few months later, the Michigan legislature revisited the issue. Schuette switched his vote. This time, he voted to ban drilling in Lake Michigan.

There’s now a state and federal ban on drilling in Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes.

There are some Republicans in Michigan who think drilling should be allowed in the Great Lakes, but the Michigan Democratic Party doesn’t want anyone to reconsider the ban. Chair Mark Brewer says an oil spill even a fraction of the size of what’s happened along the Louisiana Coast would devastate the fragile ecosystems and the struggling economy in Michigan. Brewer says voters should be concerned about who Bill Schuette would serve as attorney general.

“We need somebody who is going to stand up to big oil here in Michigan as our attorney general, not somebody who’s done its bidding over the course of his 25-year career.”

Bill Schuette says he eventually voted to ban all drilling on Lake Michigan because it was the safest way to protect the Lake, and he says he doesn’t support drilling in the Great Lakes today.

Even if he did, he probably couldn’t do much about it right now. Polls show Americans have a growing distaste for offshore drilling.

While there’s a ban on drilling on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes, that’s not the case in Canada. Canada is currently drilling in Lake Erie.

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Oil Prices on the Rise

  • Stephen Schork says the rising prices are based more on investor momentum than anything else, and that there’s plenty of oil on the market.(Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration)

Oil and gasoline prices are going up this summer. Lester Graham reports, it appears the higher prices are not caused by lower supplies.

Transcript

The Energy Information Administration’s new short-term energy outlook says gasoline prices will average about $2.92 this summer– hitting $3.00 or more in some regions. That’s about 50-cents a gallon higher than last summer.

The outlook also predicts oil prices to average $82 a barrel this summer. But, oil already hit $86 a barrel this week.

Stephen Schork with The Schork Report says… the government projections were put together about a week ago… and didn’t really anticipate the investors driving prices up this week.

“So this rally that we are seeing and this upward buy is based more on investor momentum than it is on underlying fundamentals. There’s plenty of oil on the market right now.”

The government says prices should remain relatively stable but rising… although is notes uncertainty over crude oil price forecasts remains high.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Big Oil Attacks Senator Graham

  • Republican Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina (Photo courtesy of Senator Graham)

Tackling a climate change bill is the next big issue for Congress. And special interest groups are going on the offensive. Mark Brush reports big oil is going after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham for working with Democrats on a climate change bill:

Transcript

Tackling a climate change bill is the next big issue for Congress. And special interest groups are going on the offensive. Mark Brush reports big oil is going after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham for working with Democrats on a climate change bill:

This ad comes from the American Energy Alliance – a group backed by oil and natural gas companies.

“There are some scary stories coming out of Washington. The latest is Senator Lindsey Graham’s support for a new national energy tax called cap and trade.”

But by working with democrats on a climate bill, Senator Graham says his main goal is to make the country more energy independent.

There are people coming to his defense.
They like the fact that he’s sitting down with the other party.

Michael Couick is the President of the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina.

“I think we’ve got to get smart folks in Congress to talk to each other, reason together. Otherwise we’re not going to be able to solve a problem, that if we don’t do anything by default we’ve got an energy policy that will not work for the long term.”

Some in the Republican Party say Senator Graham is selling out.
He was recently called a traitor at a town hall meeting in South Carolina.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Interview: A Former CIA Director Talks Oil

  • James Woolsey was the Director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995 (Photo courtesy of James Woolsey)

The current recession has caused the price of oil to drop – most think temporarily. James Woolsey was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency – the CIA – during the Clinton Administration. The Environment Report’s Lester Graham recently talked with him. Woolsey has been arguing that, no matter what the price, dependence on oil is a national security problem that we need to solve:

Transcript

The current recession has caused the price of oil to drop – most think temporarily. James Woolsey was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, during the Clinton Administration. The Environment Report’s Lester Graham recently talked with him. Woolsey has been arguing that no matter what the price, dependence on oil is a national security problem that we need to solve:

James Woolsey: Well, I think moving away from oil dependence, period, is extremely important for our security, and it’s important because of climate change. We are funding both sides of the War on Terror. Oil, when it comes into a hierocracy or into a dictatorship, tends to enhance the power of the state. Tom Friedman summed that up very well in his chapter of his new book ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded,’ the chapter is called ‘Fill’er Up With Dictators,’ and it’s a pretty accurate statement. We’ve also run the risk of oil cutoffs, of terrorist attacks in the Middle East, oil is just a very big national security problem for us, and it has a 97% monopoly on transportation. So, we’ve got to break that monopoly.

Lester Graham: It seems the only time you can get the general public’s attention on this issue is during periods of gas price spikes. What do you think it will take to get a sustained effort at the personal level to become more energy independent?

Woolsey: Most major automobile companies are coming out with plug-in hybrids here before long. Plug-in hybrids let you drive all electric for 30 or 40 or 50 miles before you then become just a regular hybrid using some liquid fuel. Three-quarters of the days, the average American car goes less than 40 miles. You’re driving on the functional equivalent of 50 to 75 cents a gallon when you’re driving on electricity. And that, I think, is going to get people’s attention and provide a real economic incentive to move toward plug-in hybrids – if the up-front cost of the battery is taken care of, by a tax credit, or by leasing the battery instead of buying it, or by some other financial arrangement. So people can then see they can drive on a lot less than the cost of driving on gasoline, whether it’s driving on $3 a gallon or $4 a gallon.


Graham: Now, you’ve stated your concern on climate change, global warming on several occasions, you consider yourself fairly conservative politically, I’m wondering what you make of the controversy and the debate that you recently heard in the House and what we’re likely to hear in the Senate.

Woolsey: Well, I’m kind of liberal on domestic things, and kind of conservative on defense and foreign policy things – which, to me, is a perfectly reasonable balance, but some people don’t see it that way. I think part, and possibly a very important part, of warming and climate change is likely to be being produced, most climatologists would say, by the fact that we’re pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping heat, that creates a problem. We still need to get the job done of stopping, as much as we can, something that could make the world a very, very unpleasant place – in terms of the height of sea levels and other things – for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Graham: I read an article in The Futurist Magazine from the World Future Society which explained you’re doing a lot in your personal life to become more energy independent – what’s worked for you?

Woolsey: Well, we have photovoltaic cells on the roof of our farmhouse, and lead-acid gel batteries in the basement, and a plug-in hybrid. It’s a little expensive, but you can do a lot these days to make it possible to operate your home, at least the key functions of it, even if the electric grid goes down because of an accident or some kind of hacking attack or something. And you can be, at least, partially independent. It’s not ideal, it’s not perfect, it’s going to get better, it’s going to get cheaper, but you can get started now, if you want to.

Graham: James Woolsey is a former CIA Director, and is now a partner at Vantage Point, a venture capital firm. Thanks for your time.

Woolsey: Thank you.

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Thawing Tundra Speeds Up Warming

  • University of Florida biologist Ted Schuur does field work in the Alaska tundra every summer (Photo courtesy of Ted Schuur)

A report in this week’s journal Nature looks at how thawing ground up North might
impact global warming. Amy Mayer spent some time in Interior Alaska with
scientists at Eight Mile Lake:

Transcript

A report in this week’s journal Nature looks at how thawing ground up North might
impact global warming. Amy Mayer spent some time in Interior Alaska with
scientists at Eight Mile Lake:

Permafrost is ground that’s supposed to be frozen all the time. But for decades it’s been
thawing in places.

When that happens, carbon gets released—potentially contributing to the greenhouse
effect.

Ted Schuur’s a biologist at the University of Florida but he spends his summers doing
experiments near Healy, Alaska.

I tagged along during some field visits.

I met Schuur when we were both living in Fairbanks. He lives far away now, but loves
Alaska. You only work here year after year if you do. Summer field work is brutal – tons
of mosquitoes and you work all the time because the sun doesn’t set.

Pretty soon, we’re there.

“This has to be one of my more photogenic field sites that I ever worked at.”

Tundra surrounds us. We’re just north of the Alaska Range. I can see the snow-capped
peaks. We change into rubber boots, pick up our packs, and, after a few steps, we’re on
the tussocks.

Alaskans often say walking on tussocks is like balancing on basketballs. It’s not easy. If
your feet slip off, they get wet. Schuur’s tall and used to this, so he goes faster than me,
and with less bumbling.

Soon, we’re balancing on lumber instead. Schuur and his group try to protect the areas
where they work with narrow boardwalks.

“When we first came out here, we put these boardwalks that we’re walking on now, big
10 feet pieces of lumber – they’re like 2x6s or 2x8s. But we don’t really want to walk on
the tundra because we come here a lot and you’d end up with a trail in no time and
destroy vegetation.”

Schuur knows trudging across the tundra damages it and he tries to minimize that harm.
But in order to answer his questions about the potential greenhouse effect from thawing
permafrost, he has to dig in.

Schuur saws into the tundra with a bread knife.

“It’s very satisfying. It’s like cutting a big cake – though this is a cake with lots of roots in it.”

He cuts up the plants and packs the roots and the tops into jars.

“We’re going to measure respiration of plants.”

Schuur uses a machine to scrub out the carbon from the air that’s in the jars. The plant
tops and roots will continue to respire carbon dioxide until they die. Later, he’ll use fancy
equipment to “date” the carbon that’s left.

He needs the age of the carbon because when he finds older carbon he knows it’s only
recently escaped the frozen ground. That makes it extra in the system.

At first, Schuur learned, new carbon coincides with more plant growth that uses up the
addition. That means no greenhouse effect.

But, later, the permafrost keeps thawing, more old carbon becomes available, and plant
growth just can’t keep up. That means, carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere from
the thawing permafrost – just like it does from burning coal or gasoline.

The thawing may ultimately be a bad thing, but to understand and explain it further,
Schuur wants to document it – or even cause some. Next, he says…

“As strange as it seems, I would love to thaw permafrost on a large scale,
experimentally.”

The dilemma, of course, is that causing a thaw means contributing to – in a small way –
a process that might damage or destroy the ecosystem. But we all emit carbon dioxide,
just by driving.

“Even as I do that and I do an experiment where I melt out a little bit of the permafrost, I
think we’re generating this information that’s helping society answer these huge
questions.”

Schuur says the amount of tundra he’d sacrifice is tiny relative to the whole circumpolar
region, where tons of carbon waits in ground that is frozen now but could eventually
thaw.

For The Environment Report, I’m Amy Mayer.

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Cap-And-Trade Confusion

  • Under cap-and-trade, if a business can cut emissions faster, you can trade emission credits - for a price - to a business that can’t. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)

Congress is debating a cap-and-
trade plan to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. But a recent poll
determined most people don’t know
what cap-and-trade means. Lester
Graham reports:

Transcript

Congress is debating a cap-and-
trade plan to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. But a recent poll
determined most people don’t know
what cap-and-trade means. Lester
Graham reports:

A poll by Rasmussen found 76% of Americans don’t know what cap-and-trade is.

Person 1: “Putting a price cap on something?”

Person 2: “Cap and trade? I have no idea.”

Person 3: “Captain Trade? I never heard of him.”

Here’s the simple version: cap greenhouse gases. The government will lower that cap over time.

Cut emissions faster, you can trade emission credits – for a price – to a business that can’t.

Overall, it’ll make fossil fuels more expensive, clean energy cheaper.

Democratic leaders in the House have agreed on a cap-and-trade plan. Republicans – and some Democrats – hate the plan. They think it’ll cost the economy too much.

The House will likely pass it. But Darren Samuelsohn with GreenWire says President Obama will have to push for it in the Senate.

“He could probably twist some arms and make some votes go his way if he really wanted it.”

And, even then, CAP and TRADE will likely only squeak through.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Senator Exposes Smoking Gun?

  • Senator John A. Barrasso from Wyoming (Photo courtesy of the United States Congress)

Conservative bloggers, radio talk show hosts, and even Republican leaders are making a big deal about a White House memo. Lester Graham reports the White House seems surprised by the furor:

Transcript

Conservative bloggers, radio talk show hosts, and even Republican leaders are making a big deal about a White House memo. Lester Graham reports the White House seems surprised by the furor:

During a hearing Republican Senator John Barrasso waved around a memo he said was proof the Obama administration was moving ahead with the regulation of global warming gases without having the science to back it up.

“It’s here, nine pages. This is a smoking gun, saying that your findings are political not scientifica (sic) — not scientific.”

The memo was part of a larger document from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

It’s routine to get opinions about potential regulations from different agencies.

We called the Office of Management and Budget repeatedly, asking which agency wrote the unsigned memo. No one would go on tape, but instead referred us to their blog – which basically said: this opinion is not a big deal; the EPA is operating under the law, and the science backs up any potential regulation of greenhouse gases.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Avoiding a Climate Tipping Point

  • If the global temperature goes past 2 degrees Celsius - the danger point - we might not be able to get the climate back to a more natural state (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Two new studies in the journal Nature are trying to answer: how much is too much when it comes to global warming? Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Two new studies in the journal Nature are trying to answer: how much is too much when it comes to global warming? Rebecca Williams reports:

These studies look at what we’d have to do to keep global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius.

That’s considered the danger point for climate change.

Past that point we might not be able to get the climate back to a more natural state.

These papers suggest that we’ve got to cut back on burning fossil fuels a lot. They say by 2050, countries like the US need to cut emissions by more than 90% below what they were in 1990.

The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress have proposed cutting emissions by less than that – 80%.

The researchers make the point… of all the coal and oil and natural gas in the ground that we know about, we can only burn one fourth of that amount by 2050.

We’re burning it at a much faster rate.

The studies say, at the current rate, we could be past that tipping point in less than 15 years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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New Rule for Renewables

  • More bio-fuels, like ethanol from corn, will be blended into petroleum (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)

The Obama administration wants us all to use more bio-fuels in our vehicles. Lester Graham reports on a proposed rule released by the White House:

Transcript

The Obama administration wants us all to use more bio-fuels in our vehicles. Lester Graham reports on a proposed rule released by the White House:

The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, says this will mean blending more bio-fuels into petroleum.

“Under the proposed rule, the total volume of renewable fuel ramps up to a maximum of 36-billion gallons by 2022.”

But, for the first time, renewable fuels also will have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Bob Dinneen heads up the ethanol trade-group, the Renewable Fuels Association.

He says the carbon footprint of ethanol is 61% smaller than petroleum. But the government wants to include indirect effects – such as reduced corn exports leading other countries to slash and burn rain forest to grow corn.

“We believe when that is better understood, ethanol is going to continue to demonstrate significant carbon benefits.”

The government will hear about their concerns and others during a 60-day comment period.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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